Wednesday, April 8, 2009

There has been an encouraging resurgence in manly bullshit this season.I initially avoided Sengoku Basara on the theory that nothing made from a video game has ever been worth a god damn. But a friend of the blog persuaded me to give it a go.It is, indeed, well jovian.This is clearly the voice cast and production staff Souten Kouro should have had.When the first fucking line is in Engrish, and some rockin' guitars scream behind the cavalry charge, you know you are in for a time.While it sort of blows it's load in the first half of the episode, as Date Masamune and Yukimura NUKE the fucking countryside with the power of their manliness, it promises to keep up the lunacy next week.While Mazinger's manliness tended towards the incoherent and Souten Kouro's tended towards the inept, Sengoku Basara's manliness tends towards the fucking ridiculous. And to the blatant fucking yaoi bait.But there's an overarching smirk to every second of it that somehow makes it feel more like Gintama than the actual Gintama anime has ever managed. I'll definitely be watching more.

I made the gross error of watching this immediately after Imagawa's Mazinger, so the edge was rather blunted. Date Masamune's army is fucking awesome, though-- did I catch one guy throwing up the horns before the opening credits? Subbers had far too much fun with lines like "The One-Eyed Dragon is preparing to attack us from behind!"

Eastern Standard magazine

These are the 4 issues of the fanzine we produced a while back (2002-2004). They're rough, but they're also the foundation for a lot of what we've built since then, including this site.
Click on the issues to bring up the full reader.
Issue 1 focused on Berserk, Jin-roh, and Asian live-action movies. It also had a memorable review of Gundress.

Issue 2 was a dissection of FLCL (it explains it all, really) and the work of Taiyo Matsumoto.